would go with it.
In due course Felicity came to London and as I had expected she threw herself wholeheartedly into the business of finding the right clothes. I was aware that she regarded me in a different light now that I was no longer a schoolgirl.
“Your hair is most striking,” she said.
“Your greatest asset. We’ll have to plan with that in mind.”
“My hair?” I had not thought about it before, except that it was unusually fair. It was long, straight and thick.
“It’s the colour of corn,” said Felicity.
“It’s what they call golden.
It really is very attractive. You’ll be able to do all sorts of things with it. You can wear it piled high on your head when you want to be dignified or tied back with a ribbon or even plaited when you want to look demure. You can have a lot of fun with it. And we’ll concentrate on blue to bring out the colour of your eyes. “
My parents had gone to Oxford so we reverted to old customs and had our meals in the kitchen. It was just like old times and we prevailed on Mr. Dolland to do his Hamlet or Henry V and the eerie excerpts from The Bells for the sake of the old days.
We missed Nanny Pollock but I wrote and told her what was happening and she was now very happy, completely absorbed by little Evelyn who was a ‘pickle’ and reminded her of what I had been at her age.
I paraded round the kitchen in my new garments which resulted in oohs and ahs from Meg and Emily and a few caustic comments from Mrs. Harlow who muttered something about fashions nowadays.
It was a very happy time and it did occur to me now and then that the preliminaries of travel might be more pleasant than the actuality.
It was with regret that I said goodbye to Felicity and she returned to Oxford. The day was fast approaching when we would set out for Tilbury to board the Atlantic Star.
There was constant talk of the coming trip in the kitchen. None of them had been abroad, not even Mr. Dolland, although he had almost gone to Ireland once; but that, as Mrs. Harlow pointed out, was another kettle of fish. I was going to see real foreign parts and that could be hazardous.
You never knew where you were with foreigners, commented Mrs. Harlow and I’d be seeing a lot of them. She wouldn’t have wanted to go, not even if she was offered a hundred pounds to do so.
Meg said: “Well, nobody’s going to offer you a hundred pounds to go abroad, Mrs. H. So you’re safe.”
Mrs. Harlow looked sourly at Meg who, according to her, was always getting above herself.
However, the constant talk of abroad-its attractions and its drawbacks-was suddenly overshadowed by the murder.
We first heard of it from the newsboys shouting in the streets. “
“Orrible murder. Man found shot through the head in empty farmhouse.”
Emily was sent out to buy a paper and Mr. Dolland sat at the table, wearing his spectacles and reading to the assembled company.
The murder was the main news at this time, there being nothing else’iof importance going on. It was called the Bindon Boys Murder and the Press dealt with it in lurid fashion so that people everywhere were reading of the case and wondering what was going to happen next.
Mr. Dolland had his own theories and Mrs. Harlow reckoned that Mr. Dolland had as good a notion of such things as any of the police. It was because of the plays he knew so much about and many of them were concerned with murder.
“They ought to call him in, I reckon,” she pronounced.
“He’d soon put them to rights.”
Meanwhile, basking in the glory of such admiration, Mr. Dolland would sit at the table and expound his views.
“It must be this young man,” he said.
“It all points to him, living with the family and not being one of them. That can be tricky, that can.”
“One wonders why he was brought in,” I said.
“Adopted son, it seems. I reckon he was jealous of this young man.
Jealousy can drive people to great lengths. “
“I could never abide empty houses,” said Mrs. Harlow.
“They give me the creeps.”
“Of course, the story is that he went into this empty farmhouse, this Bindon Boys as they call it, and shot him there,” went on Mr. Dolland.
“You see this Cosmo was the eldest son and that would have made the young man a bit jealous on its own, he being the outsider as it were.
Then there was this widow . Mirabel . they call her. He wanted her for himself and Cosmo takes her. Well, there’s your motive. He lures Cosmo to this empty farmhouse and shoots him. “
“He might have got away with it,” I said, ‘if the younger brother, Tristan . wasn’t that his name? if he hadn’t come in and caught him red-handed. “
I pieced the story together. There were two sons of Sir Edward Perrivale Cosmo and Tristan and also in the household was the adopted son, Simon, who had been brought there when he was five years old. Simon had been educated as a member of the family but, according to the evidence, he had always been aware that he was not quite one of them.
Sir Edward was a sick man and in fact had died at the time of the murder so he would probably have been quite unaware of it. Bindon Boys originally Bindon Bois, the Press told us, because of a copse nearby was a farmhouse on the Perrivale estate. It was in need of renovation and all three young men were concerned in the management of the estate which was a large one on the coast of Cornwall. The implication was that Simon had lured Cosmo to the derelict farmhouse and calmly shot him. He probably had plans for disposing of the body but Tristan had come in and caught him with the gun in his hand. There seemed to be ample motive. The adopted son must have been jealous of the other two; and it seemed he was in love with the widow to whom Cosmo was engaged to be married.
It was a source of great interest to the servants, and I must admit that I too began to be caught up in it.
Perhaps I was getting a little apprehensive about the coming trip with my parents and seized on something to take my thoughts away from it. I would become as animated as any of them when we sat round the kitchen table listening to Mr. Dolland pitting his wits against Scotland Yard.
“It’s what they call an open and shut case,” he pronounced.
“It would make a good play,” said Mrs. Harlow.
“Well, I am not sure of that,” replied Mr. Dolland.
“You know from the start who the murderer is. In a play there has to be a good deal of questioning and clues and things and then you come up with the surprise ending. “
“Perhaps it is not as simple as it appears,” I suggested.
“It might seem as if this Simon did it… but he says he didn’t.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” put in Mrs. Harlow.
“They all say that to save themselves and put the blame on someone else.”
Mr. Dolland pressed the palms of his hands together and looked up at the ceiling.
“Take the facts,” he said.
“A man brings a stranger into the house and treats him as his son. The others don’t want him … and the boy resents not being treated like one of the family. It builds up over the years. There’d be hatred in that house. Then there’s this widow. Cosmo’s going to marry her. There’s always been this feeling between them … so he killed Cosmo and Tristan comes in and finds him.”
“What fancy names,” said Meg with a little giggle.
“I’ve always been partial to fancy names.”
Everyone ignored the interruption and waited for Mr. Dolland to go on.
“Then there’s the widow woman. That would be the last straw. Cosmo gets everything. And what’s Simon? Just a bit better than a servant.
